Humpday Roundup

It's noon on Wednesday, the apex of the hump. It's all downhill from here. You know, in a good way...

According to Joel Sherman, although the Yanks haven't announced it yet, they have decided to put Curtis Granderson in centerfield. I was initially in favor of Granderson playing left field due to Brett Gardner's superior range, but this post in particular from Rob Neyer convinced me that there are some pretty good reasons for Granderson to play center. And of course, that alignment can change during the season if it isn't working out.

Sherman also says that Phil Hughes is likely going to be the 5th starter when the season begins. Not much of a surprise there. Now they just need to send Joba Chamberlain to AAA (not that I'm holding my breath for it).

Via Jennings, the Yanks have released 9 players from minor league camp. Not to many recognizable names, save for Seth Fortenberry and Chirs Malec.

Cliff Corcoran from Bronx Banter took a detailed look at what the Yankees see in Sergio Mitre. He talks about what happened this spring but goes well beyond the typical stats and takes more of a scouting perspective. I'm important to keep that sort of stuff in mind since was only a year removed from Tommy John surgery when he made his debut for them last season. Now he is closer to 20 months and is supposedly feeling much better.

Remember Jason Giambi's motto: Rake like an All-Star, party like a rockstar and hammer like a porno star. Well he wasn't kidding about at least one of those. (via the B-Ref blog)

Craig asks whether this year will be the one that age finally catches up to the Yanks.

This is a couple of days old, but still pretty hilarious.

Steve Sommer from FanGraphs directs us to a spreadsheet courtesy of Cot's detailing how much "dead money" each team is responsible for this season. They Yankees are paying $4.5M, which is pretty low compared to the Blue Jays, Dodgers and Angels, all of whom are close to $16M but high compared to the Cardinals, Mets and White Sox, who are about $8-9M in the black.

For those in the NYC area, 12 Angry Mascots (the folks behind the hilarious Fernando Perez video) doing a show with former Yankee Jeff Nelson this Saturday, March 28th at Comix (14th St & 9th Ave). You can check out some of their stuff on YouTube and buy tickets here.

From around the league and beyond:

Surviving Grady has a video of Youk discussing the options for his facial hair contest with some of his fellow Sawx in the locker room. Judging by Terry Francona's reaction to "clean shaven", (the current leader in the clubhouse) I think we made the right choice with our donation. However, with John Lackey throwing his weight and newfound financial might behind the mustache, the race is far from over.

Do wOBA and linear weights in general undervalue Ichiro by treating all outs the same? Tango, referencing RE24, says yes. In-depth stats not your thing? I think we all can enjoy this awesome catch Ichiro made yesterday.

Elijah Dukes' wife defends her husband on New York Baseball Digest.

David Pinto's Baseball Musings turns 8 years old today. That's like 150 in blog years.

Our friend Josh Levitt, formerly of Jorge Says No!, has moved to the new MLBFreeAgency.com. He joins It's About The Money, Stupid, Wezen-Ball, Pending Pinstripes, NYY Stadium Insider and many others on the Bloguin Network.

Similarly, for hockey fans, Rob from Bronx Baseball Daily has started up Broadway Hockey Daily.

Bad news for Doc Gooden and anyone else who might have been on the road in Franklin Lakes, N.J. last night.

Matt Sussman runs down some farcical ideas that baseball could adopt to prevent marathon extra innings contests.

In that same vein, Josh Zerkle from KSK collects some of the options that the NFL rejected for its new overtime rules. Noticably absent are the sudden death coin flip; one time through the card game War; rock, paper scissors; a punt, pass and kick competition; and a four on four mixed martial arts match in an octagon in the middle of the field.

You'll Get Nothing And Like It

With a hat tip to RAB, Joel Sherman tweets that the Yankees have declined to offer arbitration to any of their free agents. While this makes perfect sense for unclassified free agents such as Hideki Matsui, Eric Hinske, Jerry Hairston Jr, and Jose Molina, not offering arbitration to Johnny Damon, Andy Pettitte, and Xavier Nady means that the Yankees will not receive draft pick compensation if any of them sign elsewhere.

I can understand the Yankees' thought process here, though as I stated previously, I think it was worth the risk to offer arbitration to Damon. That said, the Yankees had the market figured perfectly last year in declining offers to Pettitte, Bobby Abreu, and Jason Giambi.

Nothing is settled as a result of this. Pettitte will almost assuredly be in the Bronx if he chooses to play next year, and I still think that Damon and the Yankees make the most sense for each other. Nady is likely gone, but not offering him arbitration doesn't preclude him from coming back if that's what both parties want.

Damon now becomes a more attractive candidate to other teams, as they are free to sign him without surrendering a draft pick. This likely won't impact the Yankees at all, as their refusal to offer him arbitration indicates that they have a dollar amount in mind for Damon and they're not going to exceed that be it in arbitration or on the open market. What it does signal though is that if the Yankees are truly interested in bringing Damon back, they are apparently willing to offer at least an option year if not a guaranteed second year. It's highly unlikely that Damon will be accept a one year contract on the open market, and arbitration was the club's best bet to ensure keeping him for one year and one year only.

We'll be back in the morning with a run down of who amongst the Type A's was offered arbitration and how it might impact the Yankees free agent shopping.

Closing Out The Holiday

Well, we had a little fun today, mostly at the expense of others. That's not the ideal way to go about things, but hey, we've got four days of down time to fill. We started the morning focusing on the Columbus Day Holiday, so we might as well finish the day that way too.

I can't claim this as an original idea, because I do remember seeing this somewhere on the web before, but I don't remember the exact composition of the roster. Either way, in honor of the Genoa-born Columbus, here's my all-time, all-Italian Yankee team. You'll note a couple guys have been moved to their secondary positions in order to cover the whole field:

SP: Vic Raschi
RP: Dave Righetti
C: Rick Cerone
1B: Jason Giambi
2B: Tony Lazzeri
3B: Mike Pagliarulo
SS: Phil Rizzuto
LF: Yogi Berra
CF: Joe DiMaggio
RF: Joe Pepitone
DH: Steve Balboni

Coaching Staff: Joe Torre, Billy Martin, Joe Girardi, Frank Crosetti

Of all those guys, Bye-Bye Balboni, Pags, and Rags were the only ones ever to play for the Columbus Clippers.

That's it for me paesans. I'm heading home to eat some lasagna. Enjoy your evening. Take it away Signor Prima...

Bias? What Bias?

It is with trepidation that I even wade into the cesspool that is the steroids debate, but Jack Cust opened his mouth, and the Yankees are currently playing Oakland, and I don't really have anything else I want to write about right now, so here goes....

For some unknown reason, Cust gave an interview with the AP yesterday, in which he touched upon his name being in the Mitchell Report and railed against the entire investigation, claiming it was biased due to George Mitchell's presence on the Red Sox Board of Directors:

With all the other stuff going on, with a lot of the guys coming out recently — big-name guys — to me it's kind of funny they spent all that money on the Mitchell Report and a bunch of hearsay and the guy who made all the money off it happened to work for the Red Sox. Were there any Red Sox on the report? To me, that's kind of a joke. How does that happen? It's coming out now with guys on that team. The guy worked for the Red Sox — they spent all kinds of millions of dollars — and then no one there had their name brought up.

That's not entirely accurate. Off the top of my head, two players were named in the report for events that took place during their tenure with the Sox: Paxton Crawford and Manny Alexander. Not exactly world beaters there, but it's a start.

I'm not sure where to begin this. First, the report was an absolute mess from the word "go", and will likely stand as the biggest in a series of blunders that has marked Bud Selig's now seventeen year tenure as Commissioner. While an investigation into steroid use in the sport was likely warranted, Bud jumped on that train about fifteen years too late, closing the barn door long after the entire stable of horses had run out. Choosing a principal investigator with a potential conflict of interest was a poor decision*. Sending him out to lead a multi-year, multi-million dollar investigation without any sort of subpoena power or any ability to grant immunity was a poorer one.
*As was naming an owner to serve as "acting" commissioner for six years, then letting him keep the job for an additional eleven and counting...

Without any ability to force people to talk to him, Mitchell was grasping at straws from the start. Exactly two active Major Leaguers spoke with him: Frank Thomas, of his own volition, and Jason Giambi who had the option of either cooperating or being suspended after he committed the cardinal sin of stating that baseball as a whole was wrong in the way they handled performance enhancing drugs.

Without player cooperation, nearly the entire Mitchell Report was based on the testimony of stool pigeons Kurt Radomski and Brian McNamee, who were forced to cooperate as part of federal plea deals. Radomski was a longtime clubbie with the Mets, McNamee a former strength and conditioning coach with the Yankees. Around which city and which teams do you think the majority of the report would focus?

While I do find it curious that there is a general lack of players from Mitchell's organization appearing in the report, I'd imagine that's more a result of the investigation being toothless than it is a function of any bias. If anything, the recent revelations of positive tests from both Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz (illegally leaked by employees of our federal government by the way, who in turn possess that information via a direct violation of labor law) should illustrate that no team, no clubhouse, not the Red Sox, not the Yankees, not anyone, was immune from this garbage.

As for Cust, I can understand his frustration with carrying the scarlett letter of being named in the Mitchell Report. His inclusion was tenuous at best, hearsay at worst. On a daily basis, Cust is likely surrounded by both teammates and opponents who did things as bad, if not worse, and haven't been outed.

That said, Cust was given every opportunity to respond to Mitchell, and like all card carrying MLBPA memebers, he refused to do so. From a legal perspective, I can understand that position. But if Cust, or any other of the accused, punts on his opportunity to clear his name, he loses much of his right to complain about it. And that see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil mentality is exactly how the MLB and MLBPA found themselves in this mess in the first place.

On The Defensive

It seems we've had an awful lot of defensive talk of late. Yesterday we looked at the relative scooping skills of Jason Giambi and Mark Teixeira. Derek Jeter's defensive renaissance this year has been well-documented to the point that even if he were to go in the tank with leather for the rest of the season the overwhelming public perception would be that he had a great year with the glove.

Given all the defensive talk, I suppose it's appropriate that when I took a little mental break at work yesterday at hit the "random page" link on b-r.com I wound up on the page summarizing the 1935 American League defensive statistics. The Yankees gave up the fewest runs per game that year (4.24) in part due to finishing third in fielding percentage and first in defensive efficiency. It wasn't enough to overcome Detroit's herculean offense, and the Yanks finished 3 games back.

As I've stated, I'm not entirely sold on defensive metrics yet for a number of reasons. They can be a bit misleading as well - witness the 2009 Seattle Mariners: last in the AL in fielding percentage, but first in defensive efficiency. What's going on here? Is Safeco surpressing HRs that much? Do they have that many fly ball pitchers on staff that a disproportionately large percentage of batted balls are being turned into outs? I'm not sure.

Back to 1935 though. Continuing my little mental break, I sorted the list of fielders by range factor per game (A + PO /Innings * 9). Not surprisingly, first basemen and catchers topped the list. What did surprise me is that the next most prominent position on the list was not the hallowed shortstop position, but second base, as eight of the top eleven middle infielders played second base as their primary position.

This seems very odd to me. Shortstop has long been considered the most important defensive position in the infield. So why then would the seemingly inferior second base position appear to have greater range?

Wondering if this was an anomaly specific to that year, or that era, later on I looked at 2009 statistics. This year, AL second basemen have a range factor of 4.4555 while AL shortstops are at 4.3928, a difference of more than 9% (calculated with the raw PO and A values). In a single game, the average second baseman would be involved in 0.07 additional fielding plays, but through play Monday, second basemen had participated in 591 more fielding plays over the course of the season.

So why is this? I thought it might be a result of a double play bias, with perhaps the second baseman being the pivot on a disproportionate quantity of double plays, thereby doubling up on his range factor. This may have something to do with it, as second basemen have a 587 to 415 edge in times as a doubleplay relay man. Without considering 6-6-3 and the rare 4-4-3 double plays, this would appear to account for only 172 of the 591 plays.

What of the rest? Well given the predominance of right handed hitters, it could be that second basemen are covering the bag more on stealing attempts, padding their PO numbers. American League catchers have thrown out 307 runners at second base this year. So even if second basemen recorded every single one of those putouts, that and the double plays would still only cover 479 of the 591 plays.

What about outfield relays? AL second basemen have 70 relay assists to the shortstops' 58. That still doesn't cover it.

I'm really perplexed on this one. Granted, range factor isn't as evolved as other defensive metrics. But why does it appear here that second basemen are more involved defensively than their keystone counterparts? Is is the shorter throw to first leading to fewer errors? Is it that shortstops make more errors (184 to 109 through Monday) thereby reducing their range factor? Any ideas Fackers?

It Ain't The Scoops

We all knew Mark Teixeria was going to be a gigantic improvement over Jason Giambi in a number of ways when the Yankees signed him just before Christmas. He figured to hit for a higher average, have an equal or better OBP, hit as many home runs or more, run the bases more effectively and perhaps most obviously, be able to play first base almost daily and field the position well.

In my post about Derek Jeter's defensive improvements this year, here is what I said about Teixeira's positive impact on him:

Teixeria's glove probably helps, but Jeter has never made many throwing errors. He is on pace for 5 this year and has averaged 6.5 per season since 2001.

It was a pretty blunt measurement, and it turns out I might have actually oversold Teix's influence on fielding throws to first.

John Dewan, author of The Fielding Bible II, contends that there isn't much evidence to suggest that Teixeira is better at rounding up errant throws than the Big G: (h/t BBTF)

In fact, in 2008, Giambi's 29 scoops for the Yankees were good for 0.26 scoops per game started, while Teixeira's 2009 scoops for the Yankees are only 0.23 per game.

Dewan's Plus/Minus System keeps track of positive and negative fielding plays made by each player in every game and recently added "scoops" by a first baseman which would have prevented an error by an infielder as a positive play. These stats are tallied by actual people watching the games, so there is a human element involved, but on the whole would figure to be pretty accurate.

The only thing I can think of which would skew the results is that Teixeira can cover more territory with his foot on the bag than Giambi, and this extended range allows his to field balls Giambi would have had to reach for without scooping them. But I don't think that could occur often enough to make much of an impact.

So where does Teixeira surpass Giambi?

The true difference between Gold Glover Mark Teixeira and Jason Giambi is in handling grounders. In the last two years Teixeira has saved his teams 18 runs fielding grounders, while Giambi has cost his team 18, a 36-run difference in Defensive Runs Saved.

Keep in mind those numbers are over the course of two years, but that is a massive gap in terms of fielding ability. To put it another way, Teixeira's career UZR/150 (Ultimate Zone Rating averaged over 150 games) is 2.2 while Giambi's is -7.2. Giambi might think he's a great defender, but that's obviously not what the numbers say.

Defensive performance is never going to be as easy to put a numerical value on as offensive production, but this should at least help us appreciate what Teix brings to the table on both sides of the ball.

"Let's Move On"

Yesterday, I dropped the sentence above at the very end of the Manny and Ortiz post. It was met with some friendly disagreement in the comments so I just wanted to take a moment to clarify the point.

The overriding sentiment from the commenters was that the Sox fans had their fun with all the steroid controversy surrounding the Yankees and now it's time to give it back to them.

Sox fans were merciless with Jason Giambi until the day he left, no doubt. They got various steroids chants going for Andy Pettitte on the heels of the Mitchell Report, but those have largely subsided. They were anxious to point out that they had the "clean" years of Roger Clemens' career. But let's see how aggressive with the "You-Took-Ster-Oids" chants they are next time A-Rod comes to Fenway. Like any other fanbase Red Sox Nation has it's fair share of dickheads, but most people with a reasonable amount of frontal lobe activity are going to realize they are now the pot calling the kettle black. If any of the fackin' Sullies and Murphs do start to get mouthy, Yanks fans can counter with "So-Did-Pa-Pi". What are we going to do beyond that?

I'd be lying if I said there wasn't an element of personal satisfaction and Soxenfreude involved in all of this. There more certainly is. Aside from the Yankees, it's the most central theme of this blog, for fuck's sake. But any of the idiots who were foolish enough to point the finger at the rest of the league, and really thought they were going to skate away with no stars on the Red Sox being implicated in PED use, and thought that 2004 was a gift from God, pure as the driven snow, just took a shot to the solar plexus. And that's good enough for me.

This news doesn't change what happened in 2004 from our eyes, though. The '04 roster of the Yankees included A-Rod, Gary Sheffield, Kevin Brown, Jason Giambi and almost certainly some other guys who haven't been outed yet. Their cheaters were a microscopic amount better (or just luckier) than our cheaters.

What we are heading towards is a realization that almost nothing is free from the stain of PEDs, one player and subsequently one fanbase at a time. Very few individual accomplishments and absolutely no Championships in say, the last 15-20 years or so are going to above reproach.

Like always, the Yankees are at the forefront of this, like they are in almost every aspect of baseball. We as Yankee fans are again ahead of the curve. Whether you like dragging people into the mud with you is a matter of personal preference, but it don't get a whole lot out of it.

Yeeeeaaaaah, I'm Gonna Have To Go Ahead And Disagree With You On That One

Blez from Athletics Nation has an excellent interview with Jason Giambi containing some interesting tidbits (h/t Joe P. from RAB). One of them would have altered the course of Yankee history, and the other one is just plain hilarious.

Blez: How do you view yourself as a defensive first baseman? There have been a lot of people who have said that you've had better days as a defensive first baseman, yet your fielding percentage is pretty high. So how do you view yourself?

Giambi: I view myself as great. I get the job done and that's what I'm out there for. The one thing that I know that I'm good at and you can ask Chavy and the younger guys and even Jeet (Derek Jeter) is that I've helped win a lot of guys gold gloves because I'm really good at picking balls out of the dirt. I think it's because when I was younger and playing in the Coliseum I got tired of running for the ball around all that foul ground.

If by "great" you mean "marginal", "poor", "below average", "terrible", "clumsy", or "really shitty", I totally agree. Find me one other person who would describe Giambi's defense as great without immediatley breaking out laughing, please. I love Giambi, but that is just ridiculous.

I'm not huge on defensive statistics. They all seem to have some judgement calls and subjective components built in. Until someone invents an intricate system of lasers that measures every single thing happening on a baseball field at once, we aren't really going to be able to understand the little things that separate bad from decent from good from great.

However, since there is no such laser system, I took a look at Giambi's UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating) over at FanGraphs and here's what I found.

Key:

DG = Defensive Games Played

RngR = Range Runs (The number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity.)

ErrR = Error Runs (The number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by the number of errors he makes as compared to an average fielder at that position given the same distribution of balls in play.)

UZR = Ultimate Zone Rating (The number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs, outfield arm runs, double play runs and error runs combined.)

The shading coincides with the number of games he played, so the darker the gray, the fewer games at 1B.

The only "seasons" he even masquraded as an average first baseman, he played 43 & 14 games. That's a lot of red for a "great" defensive first baseman.

The Big G: A Retrospective

Now that Jason Giambi has signed a deal with his former team, the Oakland A's, worth slighty less ($4.5M) than his $5M buyout from the Yankees, the time has come to evaluate The Big G's tenure in pinstripes. Being a Red Sox fan, Brendan has voiced his dislike of Giambi and understandably so, considering we named this blog after our dislike of his obverse on the Sox. Up until the 2008 season, I really didn't know much about him, aside from the fact that he had a great set of initials. To me, he was the slow-footed, hard-hitting first baseman, with an intimidating left handed stance and a great eye.

The Yankees signed J. Gilbert Giambi coming off of back to back incredible offensive seasons playing in a pitchers ballpark in Oakland, finishing 1st and 2nd in MVP voting in 2000 & 2001 respectively. He put up OPS+es of 187 & 198 in the greatest offensive era of all time (league average OPS+ in any given season is always 100). It wasn't quite Manny Ramirez money (8yrs/$160M), but the 7 year, $120M deal he signed in 2002 represented what the Yankees thought was a commitment to a franchise cornerstone type of player.

Unfortunately, that's not what they got. Despite the looming short porch at Yankee Stadium helping him to 81 HRs in his first two seasons in pinstripes, Giambi never amassed the the all around offensive numbers he did with Oakland. His highest OPS+ with the Yankees was 171 in 2002 and the only other time he breached 150 was in 2005 with 161. In 2004 and 2007, injuries cut his seasons in half and in the games he did play in, his production was far below his career norms.

Regrettably, his most memorable moment as a Yankee was probably the press conference where he responded to the leaked BALCO testimony, during which he issued an (understandably) intentionally vague apology for using PEDs. This, of course, transcends the incident itself and casts a shadow upon every aspect of Giambi's shortcomings in his Yankees career.

The drop off in production from Oakland to the Yankees? Steroids. Injuries to a traditionally durable player? HGH. The benign tumor he had to have removed? Clearly a result of all that juicin'...

The problem with the performance enhancing drug stain on Major League Baseball is all the collateral damage it has caused. There are players who have used and not been caught and there are probably players that have been accused who have never tried to gain that edge. Who knows how much of Giambi's downfall was really precipitated by the corners he cut?

He was already 31 years old when he signed with the Yankees, and in hindsight it looks pretty damn ridiculous to pay a one dimensional player that kind of money at that stage of his career (especially in 2002 dollars). But at that point, Baseball was looking at player's decline phases (or lack thereof) through testosterone-colored lenses.

Shortly before the golden thong "story", but slightly after he grew the State Trooper Giambi 'stache, you could have told me he did anything absolutely anything during the offseason and I would have believed you. "Oh, yeah, he's the bassist for this sick death metal band"... Awesome! Have you seen them live? "My uncle shared a guide hunting Asian Elk with him in Mongolia"... Wow, did he get his autograph? "Rumor has it he dropped in during a huge swell out at Mavericks". No fucking way... Well, he is from California, right?

As a fan, you really don't know much about the players who you root for. I've never met anyone on the current Yankees roster, so I have to go on subtle indications of what kind of person they are. Besides their performance, which is first and foremost, you judge them based things like their body language, their minute long interviews with Kim Jones, how they interact with their teammates or whether or not they chat up opposing players on the field.

Around the time when he narrowly missed the All-Star game last year via the "Final Vote", I found out his personal motto was "Party like a rock star, hammer like a porno star and rake like an All-Star", the first part of which was affirmed by this picture, snapped during the All-Star break in his year-round hometown of Las Vegas.

But more interestingly, this season Peter Abraham shared a few stories about Giambi that really changed my perception of him, like this one:

Heard a great story today. After the rookies dressed up in their Village People outfits on Saturday and went back to the hotel, Jason Giambi invited them all to the hotel bar. After a few drinks, he paid for a bus to take all the rookies, a few other players, some staff members, assorted friends and a security guard to the Capital Grille for dinner. The Big G hosted a dinner for about 25 people, including the bus driver who he insisted join the group. He paid for the whole thing and dropped a huge tip on the wait staff.

On the way back to the hotel, Jason told the kids that he wished them a long and happy career and to always watch out for the rookies on their team.

Giambi told the other players he didn’t want any publicity for what he did. Tough break, Jason. People should know you’re a good dude.

Derek Jeter is the one and only captain of the Yankees, so you never heard about The Big G's leadership skills. I don't remember reading all that much about him as a "clubhouse presence" (probably because he never won a World Series with the team). Amazingly, the guy who made a tacit admission of using steroids, and underperformed his enormous contract ended up flying under the radar to some extent.

This seasons' emergence of the 'stache, his 32 homers in 2008 (including this pinch hit, two out, walk off home run against the Jays) all re-endeared him to the fans. He left the Yankees under the cover of a tumultuous flurry of offseason spending and slipped out the back door as quietly as a guy who didn't really live up to a $120M contract possibly could have.

I'll leave you with another quote from Mr. Abraham...

I wish I could tell you some of the great lines Giambi has had over the years but I’d get fired in a minute. Suffice it to say, he’s one of the few people I’ve ever met who can use a certain word as a noun, adjective, adverb and verb, sometimes all in the same sentence.

Good luck to Jason. He has some ups and down in pinstripes but he was never boring.