Jayhawk Bill

Nobody can replace Red Sox Nation's image of Big Papi. It is possible to replace the actual contribution of Big Papi's bat. David Ortiz was batting .252/.354/.486 for 2008 when he was injured. The MLE of Carter's 2008 AAA stats is .272/.326/.495. That's not quite there, but it's pretty darn close, and Carter did nothing in his three PA with Boston to suggest that he'll have any trouble with MLB pitching.

Pardon. "You appear to be trolling." Does that count as a "hate response?"

While the strike zone graphic they used on NESN showed that called strike three to Lugo was right on the corner, before my Pitch f/x froze Nauert hadn't called a pitch within six inches of that spot a strike all day.

Bobby Cox and Clint Hurdle. Finally, Manny shows some of that talent that earns him his millions.

By D3, Terry Francona is the third-worst manager in MLB entering today's game.

I couldn't shake that off well enough to get a hit...kudos to Lugo.

Interesting points about this: 1) There were no details available regarding the survey or at hot-dog.org. Oddly enough, the website blurb giving details on the survey said to access the website itself for more details, an extraordinarily pointless comment. http://www.hot-dog.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/39358 2) If there was really an exact tie, there was almost certainly a very small sample size. 3) While the polling method and sample selection mechanism aren't cited, there's a very strong correlation between Metro area population and the listed rankings of ballparks. If the polling firm didn't use identical sample sizes for each team's market, there would be bias to larger cities; furthermore, if the polling firm just doubled the sample size for the New York, Chicago and LA MSAs because they each had two teams, then the team with more fans would hold a commanding advantage...and the survey has a tie between the ballparks of the more popular teams in New York and Chicago, with the more popular team in LA finishing fourth even though everybody knows that nachos are the ballpark food of choice in LA. *** OTOH, it's nice that Yankees fans find this exciting. Please don't let my academic discussion of how stupid this poll must be ruin your moment. Cherish your victory.

Astros Lineup: 1) Bourn CF 2) Pence RF 3) Berkman 1B 4) Lee LF 5) Tejada SS 6) Blum 2B 7) Wigginton 3B 8) Quintero C 9) Moehler P Wigginton is 7-19 lifetime vs. Beckett with three home runs.

Interesting...it's getaway Sunday, but Beckett is pitching, and we've got the entire starting lineup...even Tek catching a day game after a night game.

Let's consider a couple of things regarding Brett Gardner: 1) How well has he done this year; and 2) How good is he? First, this year...let's not cut down how well he's done. His AAA MLE is .285/.403/.438, and I'd sure take a player with a .400+ OBP who can play an MLB-caliber CF on my team. That's how well he's done. How good he is may well differ. Certainly he wasn't too highly regarded coming into 2008. His 2007 AAA batting line was .260/.343/.331, which translates to an MLE of .239/.317/.315, far too low for consideration of readiness. What changed? 1) Gardner has a career history of a greater-than-normal split vs. RHP and LHP. Entering 2008, his projected split was -.035/-.048/-.072. His actual split in AAA this year is +.043/-.011/+.130. All of his home runs have come in 83 PA vs. LHP, none in 195 PA vs. RHP. I suspect a small sample size aberration in his PA vs. LHP. 2) Gardner has a BABIP of .380. Yeah, he's fast, but he's not that fast, at least with MLB fielding, not AAA fielding. I plugged Gardner's total MiLB stats from all levels--a respectable .289/.388/.386 batting line--into the MLE calculator at minorleaguesplits.com as a SWB to NYY conversion. It came out as a .246/.332/.322 batting line. BP PECOTA projected Gardner as a .236/.313/.327 hitter in MLB entering the season. When I look at the unusual stats vs. LHP in 2008, the ultra-high BABIP, and the tendency of many high-OBP/low-SLG batters to decline severely in IsoD upon promotion to MLB, I think that expecting too much from Gardner may be overoptimistic. He can steal bases, he can play CF, and he can hit for a reasonable OBP vs. RHP at the MLB level. Expecting him to meet that .285/.403/.438 MLE in MLB, though, looks out of the question.

FWIW, was Youk really out at third? He looked safe on the NESN camera angle, they cut away to commercial, and there was no replay. :dunno:

Yeah, like you said about Ian Kennedy. Ummm...you did say that about Ian Kennedy, didn't you...ummm...never mind. Well, sorry to have typed that. You might be right this time. :dunno:

Jon Lester #31 LHP (6-3) 3.13 ERA Brandon Backe #41 RHP (5-8) 4.82 ERA Stats not adjusted to account for AL-NL differences in talent. Time for Jon Lester and the Boston Red Sox to show what they're made of. Given fair umpiring, Boston should take this chance to dominate.

Hmmmm...and I'd thought that I'd just used an interesting application of tOPS+ to show that you were right...:dunno:

Reading all these minor league stats on the Internet makes me want to Ralph. Or, to be more specific, ERALF. ERALF is a Luck-free ERA. All pitchers, but particularly minor league pitchers, get their ERA distorted by circumstances. Last winter Clay Davenport invented the ERALF, described in full here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=7165 Let's use this to look at Bowden. Checking BR, Bowden has an ERA of 2.33 at AA Portland this morning. Is he really that good? Not according to ERALF. His ERALF is 3.12, almost a run higher than his ERA. Bummer. Does that mean that he's not as good as we thought? Probably not. BP now offers MLEs for minor league players. Based upon his 2008 performance, Bowden projects to a 3.91 ERALF in MLB right now, or a 3.66 ERALF at his peak. BP also gives Runs Above Replacement (RAR), which is similar to VORP. Bowden is at 38 RAR in AA, translating to 25 RAR in MLB. That would put Bowden right between Roy Halladay and Felix Hernandez as the fifth-best pitcher in the AL. Look, probably Bowden wouldn't do quite that well if brought up to MLB right now--we're translating Bowden's best season, not his established level, and we don't know if he's gotten better or if he's gotten lucky in 2008 (even using ERALF doesn't eliminate ALL factors that might be called luck). But even if Bowden is only half as valuable as these metrics suggest--12.5 RAR at the MLB level thus far in 2008--that would still put him between Fausto Carmona and Chien-Ming Wang as the 33rd-best pitcher in the AL, and 33rd-best in the AL is a very valuable pitcher indeed. And he's just 21 years old until September...yeah, barring injury, this guy is gonna be good.

The batting lines allowed for these two pitchers since you posted (May 26-June 28): Craig Hansen (13 games): .204/.316/.204 Manny Delcarmen (12 games): .111/.163/.133 Good call, dowling25. :thumbsup:

How much are Jason Varitek's intangibles worth? If Tek helps out pitchers with either defense or game-calling, it should show up in the pitcher's stats. What we need is something like an OPS+ allowed, normalized to the pitcher's own normal standard of performance. We can find this. Baseball Reference offers a tOPS+, which is an OPS+ allowed, by catcher, for each pitcher, normalized to that pitcher's OPS allowed with all catchers for the period in question. For every 2008 Boston Red Sox pitcher, here is their career tOPS+ with Tek catching them. Remember, lower is better: [table]Pitcher's Name | Varitek OPS+ | Age Buchholz | 110 | 23 Masterson | 102 | 23 Hansen | 90 | 24 Lester | 88 | 24 Pauley | 51 | 25 Delcarmen | 93 | 26 Aardsma | 55 | 26 Papelbon | 98 | 27 Smith | 100 | 27 Matsuzaka | 98 | 27 Beckett | 99 | 28 Lopez | 81 | 30 Snyder | 98 | 30 Okajima | 89 | 32 Corey | 155 | 34 Tavarez | 106 | 35 Colon | 110 | 35 Wakefield | 109 | 41 Timlin | 110 | 42[/table] OK, the career OPS+ for pitchers over 33 will probably be better with catchers who caught them in their 20's than with catchers who caught them in their 30's. Take away those guys...and take away Chris Smith, who has never thrown to any catcher except Jason Varitek...we're left with this: [table]Pitcher's Name | Varitek OPS+ | Age Buchholz | 110 | 23 Masterson | 102 | 23 Hansen | 90 | 24 Lester | 88 | 24 Pauley | 51 | 25 Delcarmen | 93 | 26 Aardsma | 55 | 26 Papelbon | 98 | 27 Matsuzaka | 98 | 27 Beckett | 99 | 28 Lopez | 81 | 30 Snyder | 98 | 30 Okajima | 89 | 32[/table] With these pitchers, Varitek has a median career tOPS+ of 93, suggesting a median 3.5% reduction in OBP and SLG with Tek catching...and very, very roughly suggesting a possible 7% reduction in these pitchers' ERAs...which might be an effect worth somewhere in the range of 20 runs so far this season. Caveats: 1) While the work through the median tOPS+ determination is carefully described and can be replicated, the work in the last paragraph above, changing a median tOPS+ to team runs saved, involves many unstated assumptions in the guesstimation process. 2) Remember how we knocked out pitchers over 33 because their careers were already in decline, throwing our metric off? If you look at Tek's single season tOPS+ with these pitchers, it doesn't seem that he necessarily helps them at all with his game calling. It could be that Tek helps younger pitchers far more than he helps veteran pitchers. 3) Sabermetricians have searched for catchers' effect on batters with great diligence and they've never found it. This analysis isn't close to statistical significance in its size and scope. Observations: 1) Yeah, this isn't statistically significant, but it sure is suggestive of a positive effect. 2) Twenty runs is roughly the difference in value as a hitter between Jason Varitek and the top couple of catchers in the AL. Adding 20 RC to Tek's 2008 total, and adding zero to all other catchers (which is, on average, correct), would rank Tek second in the AL behind Joe Mauer. 3) Jason Varitek rocks handling weird, young pitchers. Look at the tOPS+ for Pauley, Aardsma and Lopez, and keep in mind that nobody dreamed that Chris Smith could thrive in MLB. Okajima's success might also be credited in large measure to Tek. 4) Some interesting stuff I learned doing this research: Mike Timlin has thrown more to Jason Varitek than to any two other MLB catchers combined, and Julian Tavarez has thrown more pitches to Tek than to any other MLB catcher. *** In summary, while this isn't PROOF that Jason Varitek makes a big difference with his ability to call games, it sure is indicative of a positive effect that fits with Tek's reputation with MLB players, managers, and media professionals. I call benefit of the doubt for Tek: before I decide that Boston should get rid of him, I'm adding 40-odd RC per year to his batting stats before saying that he's no longer starting caliber.

I find nothing about Hansen boner-inducing. But I just want to make clear that, if you do find him boner-inducing, there is nothing wrong with that.

Facts.

I really, really like Interleague play. It demonstrates that the NL as a whole is somewhere between the AL and AAA, usually closer to AAA.

BTW, BP just added current MLE's for AAA players. Kottaras has an MLE of .210/.332/.412 right now...that's a low BA but a very credible OBP and SLG for a catcher.

Hmmm...let's check Varitek's ordinal rank among AL catchers by VORP, 2003 to the present: [table] Year | Rank 2003 | 3rd 2004 | 5th 2005 | 2nd 2006 | 14th 2007 | 4th 2008 | 16th [/table] I don't see a trend of steady decline. I see a top-five catcher with two bad seasons, 2006 and 2008. Let's look at those seasons month-by-month. [table] Month of 2006 | Varitek's OPS April | .720 May | .748 June | .713 July | .787 August | (injured) September | .638 | Month of 2008 | Varitek's OPS April | .724 May | .913 June | .381[/table] OK...I see two-thirds of each of Tek's two bad seasons looking pretty reasonable. In 2006 he was injured at the trade deadline and he sucked upon his return. In 2008 he flourished in May but sucked incredibly in June. Tek has had a BABIP of .167 this month and he's struck out 18 times in 65 PA (27.7%). Over his career he's struck out 20.0% of the time and he's had a BABIP of .308. That BABIP can be expected to return to normal; that strikeout percentage might or might not go back to his career norm. His career OPS is .792; If he keeps striking out the way he has in June, but his BABIP rebounds, he'll be putting up a .638 OPS. That's way better than a .381 OPS, but it's still not really MLB starting-caliber, even for a catcher. In summary, I don't think that it's fair to suggest that Tek has declined badly since 2005. That's just not true: in all of 2007 and two-thirds of 2006 and 2008 he's been pretty much his 2003-2005 All Star self. He is, however, currently in a slump bad enough that it can't be explained away with BABIP and bad luck--he's missing the ball with his bat too much, and it could be slowing reflexes, worsening vision, or opposing pitchers learning that he's developed a hole in his swing and the word getting around MLB. Or... For a ray of hope, Tek has posted a .167/.286/.278 in Interleague play this year. Maybe Tek's famous knowledge of opposing teams will pay off when he gets back to the AL. Let's hope so.