Counterpoint: Who Cares?

In the six months I've been writing here, rarely have Jay and I disagreed on any major points. We disagreed about a hypothetical recall of Austin Jackson in the wake of a potential Melky Cabrera injury, and we differ as to how the Yankees should approach Hideki Matsui this off-season. But in instances like these, I think we both can understand, if not agree with, the other viewpoint.

Today though, I think we may have an instance of us being distinctly on opposite sides of the coin. This morning, Jay parsed the AL MVP results and had some valid criticisms of the order of finish as well as some of the more obscure individual votes. Moshe Mandel at The Yankee Universe had something similar yesterday, and I've seen traces of the same sentiment elsewhere in the blogosphere. To which I say: who cares?

Perhaps this is hypocritical of me. Just last week I put up a post here essentially criticizing the "stats based community" for not calling out Tyler Kepner, Zack Greinke, and Brian Bannister for their misuse and misunderstanding of advanced metrics in the wake of Greinke's Cy Young Award victory. Though perhaps I didn't make the point as clearly as I wanted, my issue wasn't so much with the misuse and misunderstanding as it was that everyone was so happy that Greinke both won and acknowledged FIP in the process, that they withheld the usual cantankerousness and I'm-smarter-than-you responses that normally follow such a slip up. Now, when the reaction is a bit truer to character, once again it's me who's complaining about the complaining, just as last week I complained about the lack of complaining.

That said, I still think this is really, really unnecessary. Yes, by any worthy metric Derek Jeter was more valuable than Mark Teixeira. Yes, Ben Zobrist probably finished much lower than he deserved. Yes, there were several players who received individual votes that were higher than they deserved or not deserved at all. Yes, I'm surprised/disappointed that Jason Bartlett didn't receive a single vote. Yes, a first place vote for Miguel Cabrera is so patently stupid that it's probably a waste of energy to even explain why.

But still, do we really need to break down all the grave injustices that happened behind Joe Mauer's cavernous margin of victory? Should we even care what happened beyond Mauer taking the hardware? Isn't the whole point to get the winner right, not whoever comes after him? Don't we often preach about sample size, and isn't the point of casting 28 ballots with 10 slots each for a pool of over 400 players that the "most valuable" player will rise to the top? Sure there will be some oddball votes in there, but the right guy won, and he came within one vote and five points of doing so unanimously. Does any of the rest matter?

Please don't take for me anti-statistic. If you read here with any degree of regularity during the season you know that I often sigthed OPS+, wOBA, UZR, WAR, FIP, etc. That isn't the point. The point is how much is enough? We've seen the deservedly-maligned BBWAA get all four major awards "right", and three of the votes weren't particularly close. In doing so they've eschewed traditional biases that would have favored less deserving candidates in years past. Shouldn't this be enough to keep us content for now? Remember, this round of off-season awards represents the Battle of Saratoga, not the Treaty of Paris.

At their core, the MVP, the Cy Young Award, and even the Hall of Fame for that matter are subjective, loosely-defined awards that have little value beyond whatever worth we assign to them. I have a hard time understanding the utter outrage year after year as the awards season comes and goes. While we'd all like to believe that "objective journalists" are the stewards of these institutions, the fact of the matter is we're not talking about Edward R. Murrow or Walter Kronkite here. These are sportswriters. And while many may still exhibit signs of homerism or may be hopelessly clinging to archaic and ineffective means of measuring performance, I still think they're in a much better state today than they were in the days of Grantland Rice, or Ford C. Frick, or Jimmy Cannon. We're not seeing even the likes of Barry Bonds getting jobbed out of a deserved MVP because he's an asshole to the writers. Ask Ted Williams' frozen detached skull what he thinks about that.

So, with a plethora of better methods to assess value at our disposal, why do we even care who wins these things anymore, let alone who finishes second through tenth? If we want to know who is truly valuable, then why not just pull up the WAR leaderboard, or whichever future metric proves to be the most accurate means of assessing performance? Why do we care which pitcher is given an award named after the all-time wins leader, when we know wins are a misleading indicator of true performance, and we know that Cy Young was an inferior pitcher when compared to contemporaries like Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson? Do we even need the BBWAA to give the awards to the "right" players to validate what the metrics have already told us?

As Joe at RAB pointed out in the wake of the Cy Young voting, this isn't a culture war anymore. This is the true state of baseball these days, and it's an amalgamation of what were once two distinct schools of thought. As much as some seem to define themselves by it, this is no longer us vs. them, Moneyball vs. old-school, stats vs. scouts, RBI vs. WAR. The game - or more specifically how we look at the game - has changed, is changing, will continue to change, and will do so across the board. It's no longer just Bill James, a few forward thinking executives, a handful of enlightened websites. It's widespread; it's prevalent.

Few if any of GMs are traditional "baseball men"; nearly all have a business background in addition to their baseball experience. Every front office has some sort of statistical analysis taking place. Bill James, Voros McCracken, Tom Tango and others were or are employed by, or are consultants to, Major League clubs. David Cone's routinely referencing Fangraphs on Yankee telecasts. Keith Law, Will Carroll, and other Baseball Prospectus folks were given votes in the post-season awards process. High-profile national sportswriters like Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski are at the forefront of the "statistical revolution", and if their work wasn't enough to force their colleagues to learn about advanced metrics it was at least enough to create a palpable buzz about the truly worthy candidates.

The times they are a changing folks. And while we might not yet be living in a sabermetric utopia, we've seen great strides made this past week. As we approach Thanksgiving and presumably stop to reflect upon what we are thankful for, shouldn't we at least be satisfied, if not grateful, that the most deserving candidates won both MVPs and both Cy Young Awards rather than griping about the idiot who voted Jason Kubel seventh? I think we should; what about you?

WHIP, FIP & The WAR Against Wins

Good morning, Fackers. In the wake of the senior circuit Cy Young, like the AL version, being awarded to a pitcher not on the basis of his won-lost record but on the quality and number of his innings pitched, we're again going to disagree with the well-respected Tyler Kepner.

As Matt pointed out on Wednesday, Kepner noted that Zack Greinke acknowledged FIP in his post-award conference call but was grasping at straws in an attempt to frame the knowledge of advanced statistics as a key component in Greinke's success. Last night, Kepner tried to connect what was said by Greinke (or more accurately, Brian Bannister) with Tim Lincecum's explanation of his approach and made the same conflation:

Obviously, there is no substitute for pure talent. But in Greinke, Bannister’s teammate, we are seeing what can happen when off-the-charts talent meets sophisticated understanding of numbers.

The same is true of Lincecum, to a degree. His stuff is filthy, but he said he was mainly concerned with how many walks-plus-hits he allows per inning – which was curious, in a way, because Dan Haren, Chris Carpenter and Javier Vazquez all had a better WHIP than Lincecum in the N.L. this season.

First, Lincecum's WHIP was a minuscule 1.05. Haren, Carpenter, and Vasquez? 1.00, 1.01, 1.03. That's a difference of one batter for every 20, 25 and 50 innings, respectively, which Lincecum easily erases with his superior strikeout ratio.

But more importantly, what if Lincecum had simply said that he was trying his best not to allow batters to reach base? It would have been dismissed as a typical cliche. On the offensive side of the ball, we frequently hear batters saying that they were "just trying to get on base" which is just a different way of saying that they were trying to improve their on base percentage.

In most cases, the goals in baseball are pretty obvious. If you are a batter, don't use up outs. If you are a pitcher, try to keep men off the basepaths, preferably via strikeout. There is still some wiggle room regarding the value of sacrifice hits and bunting, but there isn't a whole lot advanced statistics can teach players. Knowing about UZR isn't going to make someone a better defender. They already know they should be trying to field as many balls, as far away from them as possible.

The main function of the more advanced metrics that are steadily gaining in popularity such as WAR, wOBA, VORP, WPA, RE24, UZR, and FRAA is that they allow observers to more accurately compare players to one another. While players citing FIP and WHIP can only increase their popularity, which is certainly a positive thing, understanding them doesn't provide much in terms of strategical, on-field edge.

The real story emerging from the 2009 Cy Young voting is that the voters have begun to value better statistics and in turn, more objective analysis. Which is to say, they're not blindly picking the pitcher who had the most wins.

Kepner demonstrates this by comparing this year's voting to win-skewed results 1990 and 1998 (both of which illustrate the writer's old reliance on wins), but Dave Cameron over at FanGraphs sums it up best:

Congratulations to the members of the BBWAA, who have been willing to adapt as the game changes. They deserve recognition for being willing to accept the shift towards better analytical methods. And getting away from wins as a measure of the value of a pitcher is a big first step.

Of course, Adam Wainwright who left his last game of the season with a 6-1 lead in line for his 20th win still received the most first place votes in the NL. He only finished 10 points behind Lincecum, so maybe if his bullpen had held up, the aftermath of these awards would be slightly less celebratory.

Both Matt and I have taken turns raining on this parade, but I think it's likely that in hindsight, 2009 will be cited as the year that Advanced Stats won the war against Conventional Wisdom. However, I'm more inclined to think that this was the Battle of Saratoga. And considering Bill James penned the hardball version of the Declaration of Independence over 30 years ago, it's probably going to a while before we see any sort of Treaty of Paris.

19 It Is...

(Photos)

CC Sabathia will have to wait until at least next year to finally get his 20 win season. The big man got shelled in a bad way, allowing 9 runs (5 earned) over 2 2/3 IP, raising his season ERA from 3.21 to 3.37. The fact that 4 of the runs don't count against his ERA is nice, but it's also a little misleading since the Yanks committed a grand total of one error behind him and it came with no one out in the first. And although Mark Teixeira was charged with the gaffe, he recovered in time but Sabathia wasn't covering first base. Unfortunately, the 9 run figure does more justice to the performance that the official 5. It was his worst start of the season.

As brilliant as he has been over his last 11 starts, Sabathia was as terrible last night, allowing 14 men to reach base while recording only 8 outs, expending an average of just over 10 pitches to get each out. The Rays slapped 8 hits, drew 5 walks and were hit by a pitch.

Speaking of being hit by pitches, Mark Teixeira was plunked in the left hand by David Price in the first inning, possible retribution for Sabathia breaking two of Carlos Pena's fingers the last time the two teams squared off. Teixeira is currently tied with Pena for the AL lead in home runs and it wouldn't be too much of a stretch that Tampa, with nothing left to pay for, was seeking their pound of flesh from the Yankees' first baseman. Teix was visibly shaken and it might have contributed to his fielding error in the first.

But back to Sabathia. It would have been worse in a way if the bullpen blew the game for him, but it's not exactly the best note on which to head into the postseason. After the game he talked about not being able to command his fastball but also said: "It's definitely disappointing any time you lose. It's tough to go out there and pitch for individual things, so I just wanted to go out and have a good outing and keep it relevant to the playoffs."

It was relevant to his previous playoff performances, all right. Typically a great control pitcher, Sabathia has walked 22 batters in 25 postseason innings and has given up 22 runs. It's one start, but it came in the game where he was probably putting the most pressure on himself that he had in a while. He also walked 5 batters on Opening Day and 5 more at the opening of the New Stadium, when all eyes were seemed to be on him. I don't want to be concerned, but yeah, I'm a little concerned.

It doesn't at all take away from the type of season he's had for the Yanks, especially the second half, but falling short of 20 wins, especially in the fashion that he did, just killed whatever slim chance that he might steal the AL Cy Young from Zack Greinke. It's probably better that way, since Greinke wholly deserves the honor.

The final tally was 13-4. It was an ugly game on all fronts and one that the Yanks will forget about soon enough.

A few other notes: B.J. Upton hit for the first cycle in Devil Rays/Rays history in his first four at bats, going triple, double, homer single, and drove in 6 runs in the process. He drew a walk later in the game as well, making it an even more cyclic cycle. The Yankees almost used an entire 25 man roster tonight, calling on 16 position players and 8 pitchers. Juan Miranda hit his first Major League homer, a 460 ft blast that was declared the longest at Tropicana Field this season which also tied the Yanks' record for most HRs in a season at 242, set in 2004. Phil Hughes also had a bad night, pitching 1/3 of an inning and giving up three hits and a run. The AL Central race got a little more interesting as the Tigers lost and Twins won. Zack Greinke faces the Twinkies tomorrow, however.

Dodging Zack Greinke

When I saw that Kansas City's ace and lone star player had pitched a nice game against the Red Sox last week (contrary to the observations of Jim Rice), I figured that the Yanks would be running into him as well when the Royals came to town this week.

Up until that point, one of the very few remaining arguments against Zack Greinke's right to the AL Cy Young was the fact that he hadn't faced the Yankees or Red Sox this season. Needless to say, this is a pretty weak point both because pitcher's can't control their own schedule and if you wanted to complain about a lack of competition, you might want to start by noting that he pitches in the AL Central.

The reason that the Yankees didn't see him the first time around this year goes back to the fact that Gil Meche was tagged as the opening day starter for the Royals. This was due in part because he had that designation ever since being signed to a 5 year, $55M deal before the beginning of the 2007 season, but we can be sure it won't be the case next year, barring some unforeseen circumstances. Greinke was the Royals best pitcher last year too, but not by all that much, and as such was ticketed to start the second game of the season. As a result, when the Yankees came to town for the 4th through 6th games of the season, they missed the Zack Attack who pitched in the 2nd and 7th.

[Sidenote: The Yankees actually drafted Zack's younger brother Luke in the 12th round out of Auburn University last June. The lesser Greinke started 9 games for the Staten Island Yanks to a 4.01 ERA in 33 1/3 IP but was released out of Spring Training this year, before he could be assigned to a higher level of the minor leagues.]

As fate would have it, however, Zack Greinke shut down the Twins over 7 innings on Sunday night, temporarily derailing their charge for the AL Central title, and will once again miss the Yankees. This would be a welcome reprieve during the regular season, one that the Yankees never seem to get from the likes of Roy Halladay. However, with nothing left to be determined but how many games over 100 the Yankees can win and who gets the last few spots on the postseason roster, it would have been nice to see Greinke make a start which could potentially tip which way the Cy Young voting goes.

As Joe Posnanski has seemingly taken it upon himself to prove, Greinke is having a historically great season. He currently leads the league with an absurd 2.06 ERA (213 ERA+) and 1.066 WHIP, and has struck out 237 and walked just 49 in 223 1/3 IP. He's gone fewer than six innings only four times all year, and in two of those outings, he didn't allow any runs. His six complete games are second only to Roy Halladay's 8 and both of them have 3 shutouts to their name. Basically, the only reason he hasn't won 20 games yet is because the Royals are historically inept offensively.

As Jason pointed out this morning, Greinke's ERA in his losses is just about equal to CC Sabathia's overall mark. Were he having the same type of season for the Yankees, he'd likely be headed for 25+ wins. If he doesn't get the Cy Young it will rank alongside choosing Bartolo Colon over Johan Santana - and to a lesser extent, Mariano Rivera - in 2005 in terms of recent egregious snubs.

It's too bad we won't be able to see him first hand against the Yankees.

Number of Days Until Spring Training: #22 (LaTroy Hawkins)

If you are a Yankees fan, and watched any of the first half of the season last year, chances are you saw this: Joe Girardi coming out to get LaTroy Hawkins because he was unable to finish an inning. His wind-up was awkward because he started pulling his hand out of his glove too soon. Hawkins gave up 42 hits, 17 walks, and 26 runs in his 41 IP as a Yankee good for a 5.77 ERA. However, he was released in early August and went to Houston, where he sported a nifty 0.43ERRRRrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnooo.....................................................................

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Suzyn Waldman: "RAW-JAH CLEMENS IS IN FACK YOUK'S POST!!1!!1!!!!

AND RAW-JAH CLEMENS IS COMING BACK!!!

AWWW MY GOODN-GOODESSS GGGRAAACIOOUSSS!!!!!11!

OF ALL THE DRAMATIC THINGS... (trails off)

OF ALL THE DRAMATIC THINGS I HAVE EV-AH SEEN... "

/head explodes



















I'm sorry. This was never going to be about boo-magnet LaTroy Hawkins, nor was it going to concern the first two years of Robinson Cano or the last half year of Xavier Nady. All due respect to Allie Reynolds, who had more value over his career as a Yankee or Jimmy Key who was undoubtedly a better guy than Clemens.

The thing that makes Suzyn Waldman's hysterical overreaction to Clemens "dramatic" return in May 2007 (I was at his first game back) even more ridiculous is that The Rocket's first time with the Yankees wasn't really that impressive, it was just beautifully timed.

Clemens 300th win came in Pinstripes, in the same game he recorded his 4,000th strikeout. The team won two Championships in his first two years and he pitched six strong innings in Game 7 of the 2001 WS. His postseason ERA with the Yankees was .326, but his ERA in the World Series was 1.90.

When Roger won the Cy Young in 2001, Mike Mussina actually pitched a few more innings (229 to 220), had one more strikeout (214 to 213), a lower ERA (3.15 to 3.51) and a lower WHIP (1.07 to 1.26) than Clemens. The only category of import Mussina wasn't as good or better than Clemens in, was of course, their won-lost records. Mussina was (17-11) while Clemens started (20-1), finished (20-3) and as a result received 87% of the vote while Mussina got just 1%.

Clemens regular season ERA in his first stint with the Yankees was 4.02 (about a 115 ERA+) and his average won-lost record was 15-7. They were solid numbers, but certainly not as good as the Yankees had hoped when they acquired him from Toronto, coming off of two sub-3.00ERA, 230+ inning, 20+ win campaigns.

In his last go round with the Yanks, he struggled with hamstring problems but pitched to better than a league average ERA (107 ERA+), which is pretty much on par with what everyone expected when they unveiled him like it was a fucking reverse surprise party and signed him to a prorated $28,000,022 deal.

The last game he ever started for the Yanks was during the 2007 ALDS in a loss to Cleveland. Bothered by his hamstring once again, he lasted only 2 1/3 innings, gave up 3 runs and was replaced by Phil Hughes. In relief, Hughes pitched brilliantly (3 2/3IP 2H 0R), in what I had really thought at the time could be a symbolic change of the guards. Not so much.

Since then, Hughes hasn't won a game, and even though Clemens hasn't thrown a pitch, his entire career has been called into question and his public identity permanently tarnished. Clearly, nothing was going to be the same once his HGH & steroid use was revealed, but the ego synergy between him and Rusty Hardin has created what might be the biggest PR disaster possible. Do you think the story about Mindy McCready would have come out if he wasn't involved in a legal battle where each side was calling the others character into question?

If Clemens has just owned up to his steroid use and made a preemptive strike before the Mitchell Report came out, his reputation wouldn't be the colossal clusterfuck it now is. Of course, the type of player that uses is steroids is unlikely to be the kind of person who can own up to a mistake publicly, especially when it means sacrificing every one's perception of what you've worked your whole life for.

Sorry about not getting your pardon, Rog. I guess nobody knows you when you're down and out.

Mr. Clapton, would you please...
(quick Derek Trucks solo at 1:42 mark)