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Keep up with the latest news, notes and developments with Fungoes, a daily journal for all things baseball that will last all season long.
Wild Card: A lesson in numbersOne of the emerging concerns of the Wild Card portion of this blog has been teams and players that have either exceeded or fallen short of expectations thus far. Today, however, I thought I'd try to provide a clue as to why some of those teams have been underperforming or overperforming by taking a look at the impact of injuries on the 30 major league teams. The simplest way to do this is to tally all of the days that a team's players have spent on the disabled list. Counting the regular season only (some Opening Day DL assignments were retroactive to March), we are 68 days into the 2007 season. If a team has had one player out all season and another player miss only the minimum on the 15-day DL, they would have lost 83 days to the DL. By this method, the Kansas City Royals lead the majors with 527 days lost to the DL, while the San Francisco Giants have been least affected, losing just 62 days. This method can be misleading, however. Take the Tigers, for example. They have lost 448 days to the DL, but 134 of them have been days missed by infielder Tony Giarratano, who appeared in just 15 major league games last year, and reliever Edward Campusano, who has never pitched above Double-A. Certainly the 15 days lost by Jeremy Bonderman were far more detrimental to the Tigers than the 134 lost by Giarratano and Campusano. In order to compensate for this, we can look not at days lost to the DL, but dollars lost (a method popularized by Baseball Prospectus). Giarratano and Campusano, befitting their significance to the team, are earning the major league minimum this year ($380,000), while Bonderman is making $4.5 million. If we divide those salaries by the 182 calendar days over which the season takes place (because DL minimums also count calendar days, not just game days), and multiply the result by the number of days the player has spent on the DL, we get a more representative $279,790.22 lost for Giarratano and Campusano combined versus $370,879.12 for Bonderman alone. The formula, so far: { (Salary ÷ 182) x Days on DL } Applying this method to all 30 teams, we find out that the Mets have lost the most dollars to the DL (more than $9.1 million, more than half of that going to Pedro Martinez), while the Pirates have lost the fewest ($365,453.30, less than the Tigers have lost on Bonderman alone). Of course, there's some context missing here as well. A million dollars lost to injuries is a lot more harmful to the Marlins, whose total Opening Day payroll was just $30.5 million, than it is to the Mets, whose Opening Day payroll was more than $115 million. I've thus taken one final step. After pro-rating each team's Opening Day payroll over the first 67 days of the season (68 for the Cards and Mets, who opened a day earlier than the other 28 teams), I divided each team's total dollars lost to the DL by that pro-rated payroll figure to arrive at the approximate percentage of payroll each team has lost to the disabled list thus far in 2007 (I say approximate because team payrolls fluctuate throughout the season).
Using this system we find that the team that's been hit hardest by injuries thus far has been the Washington Nationals, who have lost nearly $4.2 million of their pro-rated $13.7 million salary to the DL. That's 30.5 percent, nearly half of which has gone to Nick Johnson, though the starting rotation has also been hard hit. Given the size of their total payroll, the Mets slip down to fourth overall, with the Royals, who had slipped to eighth in total dollars lost, move back up to fifth. The A's and Braves finish second and third, respectively. A couple of notes on the resulting list: The Marlins have had the most players hit the DL and are third in the majors in days lost to the DL, but rank 19th by this system. That's less an indication of the system's failures than it is the Marlins' bizarre payroll structure. Some $13.85 million of the Marlins' Opening Day payroll of $30,507,000 was tied up in two players: Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis, leaving just $16.675 million to be divided among the other 23 men on the roster. Without an injury to either Cabrera or Willis, the Marlins will be hard pressed to break into the top half of this chart. That the Nationals top the chart should be sufficient indication that the system is not skewed against low-payroll teams, but the Marlins should certainly rank higher. Among the players who have spent time on Florida's DL are the Marlins' intended starting first baseman, right fielder, center fielder, closer, and three of their top six starting pitchers. The Red Sox DL losses, meanwhile, are related almost entirely to Matt Clement, who is Boston's answer to Carl Pavano. Unlike the Yankees with Pavano, however, the Red Sox proceeded over the off-season on the assumption that they wouldn't get any contribution from Clement in 2007 following his September 2006 shoulder surgery. With that in mind, it almost seems fair to run the Sox's numbers without Clement, which would leave them with just 2.5 percent of their pro-rated payroll lost the DL thus far, just edging out the Pirates as the healthiest team in baseball. It's not a surprise, then, that Boston has also been the best team in baseball. Labels: Wild Card AL West: The Deadball Era
For many modern-day baseball fans, a high-scoring affair is far more exciting than a pitchers' duel. But the Oakland A's aren't from this era. The Athletics, it seems, hate runs. They don't score them; they don't give them up. Currently, the A's are 12th in the league in runs scored per game and first in the league in runs allowed per game. But is this deadball era style of baseball a recipe for success? Can the team make it to the postseason if it gives up the fewest runs, but also scores the fewest? It's unlikely. Sure, pitching wins championships -– and right now, led by Dan Haren and Chad Gaudin, the A's pitching is as good as it gets -– but somewhere along the line someone has to hit and the team has to score. The A's are 31-27 and are in third place by percentage points, 5 1/2 games behind the AL West-leading Angels. The A's have won five in a row thanks to a combination of outstanding pitching and offensive prowess (which in this case is defined as scoring four runs on June 3, five on June 4 and three on June 6), but it's doubtful they will be able to keep it up long enough to surpass the Angels, who, after all, aren't playing deadball baseball. The Angels are right behind the A's with the second-fewest runs allowed per game, but they're seventh in the league in runs scored per game, averaging more than a half-run higher than the A's. The A's rank in the top-five in only one major offensive category: walks (second, with 238). But their hitting has been so poor that even though they have earned a lot of walks, they are still only in the middle of the pack (eighth) in on-base percentage, the former key to their success and the pet-stat of general manager Billy Beane. No one on the team with at least 100 at-bats is hitting .300, though Dan Johnson (.284) and Nick Swisher (.299) are close. And the A's, who are 13th in stolen bases, don't have enough team speed -– and don't utilize the speed they do have -– to create more scoring opportunities when someone actually manages to get on base. The A's, especially of late, have relied on rare offensive occurrences to pull out wins. But it's unlikely that Eric Chavez will hit many more walk-off home runs this season, or that Mark Ellis will again hit for the cycle (as they did against the Red Sox on June 4). It's certainly just as likely Jack Cust will fall into a prolonged and shocking strikeout slump as he will into another home run hitting streak. Serious baseball fans want to believe that a lot of runs don't necessarily equate to a more exciting game, but the fact is the A's are pretty boring. Watching talented young pitchers emerge is always a thrill, but watching this offense is only slightly less dull than tracking the growth of a single blade of grass. Swisher might be the only all-around entertaining and promising non-pitcher currently on the A's. Labels: AL West NL East: Nationals CelebrationIt's official: we can no longer rely upon the Washington Nationals as a go-to punch line here at the Fungoes blog. Four Wednesdays ago, the Nats stood at 9-25 after suffering their eighth straight loss, putting them on pace to go 43-119, and seemed certain to fulfill the destiny predicted for them by experts everywhere as one of history's most putrid teams. But a funny thing has happened since then: they've started to play competitive baseball. The Nats won 14 of 21 immediately after that eight game slide, and are now 24-35. Yes, they're still on track to lose 96 games, but suddenly they're not baseball's worst team (that would be the Rangers, at 21-37). Nor are they baseball's second-worst team, nor even the third-worst (the Royals and Reds are both 22-38). There are still certain things that the Nats' collection of journeymen and cast-offs can't do: they can't score (28th in runs); they can't make contact (28th in batting average); they can't hit for power (28th in extra base hits); they can't field (6th highest error total); they can't find good starting pitching (26th in starters' ERA, 29th in starters' wins). But here are four reasons why the Nats might not reach the century-mark in losses after all. 1. The Bullpen Thanks to an unsettled and injury-plagued starting staff, Washington's bullpen has thrown more innings (305.2) than any other—and they've been more than up to the task, ranking tenth in ERA (3.84) and fourth in wins (10). One reason for their success is that they expected to be overworked. "It's something we dealt with last year too," closer Chad Cordero told me during spring training. "We had a couple spans last year where the bullpen had to come in the third or fourth inning a couple games in a row. We're used to it." Jesus Colome, who was released by the Devil Rays last April, has been a revelation in middle relief: after a team-high 30 appearances, he boasts a 2.37 ERA, and his win total of four exceed that of any Nats starter. 2. Fundamentals Want to know why lightening-fast leadoff man Felipe Lopez, who stole 44 bases last season, has swiped only six this year? It's because the Nats have become the most conservative group in Washington outside the American Enterprise Institute: they've attempted only 27 steals all year, second fewest in baseball. "I don't want to start doing a bunch of crazy stuff or be running all over the place, so people say I'm aggressive, but in the end I'm hurting myself," new manager Manny Acta said in spring training. "We have to run the bases better—we were first in caught stealing last year, and those are things that don't help you." With runs at a premium, Acta's Nats are gambling themselves out of innings no longer—and that cautious, station-to-station style has helped them go 12-8 in one-run games. 3. Ryans Third baseman Ryan Zimmerman's a known quantity, and leads the team in RBI even after a slow start. But the big news is that 28-year-old Ryan Church (.271, 6 HR, 27 RBI) finally seems to have put things together: I was shocked the other day in Philadelphia to look up at the NL doubles leaders they posted on the scoreboard and see Church's name at number four, sandwiched between Matt Holliday and Derek Lee. 4. Diamonds in the rough One team's trash is apparently the Nats' treasure. Ronnie Belliard and Tony Batista have been surprisingly serviceable in Washington, but Dmitri Young, who ran (or ate?) himself out of Detroit last September, has been the real find. He's seventh in the NL in OBP (.379) and eighth in batting (.319), thanks in large measure to a June in which he hit .397. When (and if) regular first bagger Nick Johnson finally returns from a broken right femur, the Nats might have to deal with a situation to which they can't be accustomed: a glut of talent at a single position. "They have a good team," said a straight-faced Jamie Moyer the other day. "To me, even when they weren't playing well in the beginning of the season, they were no pushover." For the 2006 Washington Nationals, not being a pushover is an achievement in itself. Labels: NL East NL Central: Welcome Homer BaileyThe Homer Bailey Era begins in Cincy on Friday. An NL advance scout gives us the scoop on the Reds phenom: "I'd say that his stuff is as good as anyone's in the minors. He's got this real nice, easy motion, it doesn't seem like he's throwing that hard but then you look at the radar gun -- He's throwing 98! His curveball is exceptional; he's got two versions of it -- one is a 12-6 hammer and another that goes 11-5. But some people are making it sound like he's going to get up here and dominate, and I'm not sure that's going to happen. He's been good but hasn't been great in the minors this year. Hasn't struck out a ton of people, and he's had some injuries. His changeup hasn't been there, either. Could be a rocky start for him -- but there's no doubt he’ll be a No.1 for them in a year or two." Meanwhile, the Free Yovani campaign continues. The Brewers say that they haven't discussed calling Yovani Gallardo up to The Show, but what on earth are they waiting for? Gallardo has only gone 8-1 with a 2.14 ERA and struck out 95 hitters in 67 innings. The Brewers' pitching staff was hit hard during their May swoon, and Gallardo is a logical replacement for Dave Bush, who is 3-6 with a 5.67 ERA. Labels: NL Central AL Central: Garza's dilemmaMatt Garza should be mad. The Twins' top pitching prospect, a first-round pick in 2005 and USA Today's Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2006, rose from Single-A ball to the majors all in one season. He was dominant in the minors -- a combined 14-4 with 154 strikeouts and a 1.99 ERA in 135 2/3 innings -- and admittedly less so in the majors (3-6, 5.76), but this spring he's been wasting away in Triple-A while Minnesota gave seven starts to Sidney Ponson, stuck with Ramon Ortiz in the rotation a few weeks too long, and still trot Carlos Silva out to the mound every fifth day. It's no wonder Garza voiced his frustration last week. The big league club is in third place, a scant one game over .500 and six games back in the division. And there he was, holed up in Rochester, N.Y. What's the delay, Minnesota? At least the Twins called up another promising prospect in '05 second-round pick Kevin Slowey to take Ortiz's spot in the rotation, if it was a bit curious that they bypassed Garza for a pitcher who hadn't even had a cup of coffee in the majors (though Slowey is leading the International League in ERA at 1.54). I guess that's the price of insubordination. Or maybe it's simply another a key component of the Twins' long-ranging plans. Johan Santana was brought along his slowly when he was in his early 20s. Though he was pitching for the parent club, he was only a part-time starter and most-of-the-time reliever. And Francisco Liriano, at the age of 24, is out all season with Tommy John surgery. Patience, they say, is a virtue and in the case of general manager Terry Ryan, it's also a discipline he seems to have mastered. Of course, no matter why Garza isn't on the 25-man roster, what was troubling about his recent comments -- and where he stepped a little over the line -- was his criticism of the advice he's received from the Twins. Garza hasn't exhibited the same brilliance he did in the minors last year, going 3-5 with a 3.19 ERA in 11 starts so far in 2007, and he made the mistake of blaming the organization for urging him to throw too many offspeed pitches. The right-handed power pitcher even went so far as to say, "I'm not sleeping well at night because I'm trying to be something I'm not." He pointed to his strong spring stats (1.50 ERA in 12 innings) as proof he can be successful against major-league competition, citing a fatigued arm for his mediocrity with the Twins last September, and asked that he be allowed to pitch the way the fireballer has always pitched: less deception, more speed. Twins fans should be heartened that their blue chipper is champing at the bit. After Garza's public criticism, and with the Twins recently having won eight of nine games, I understand their reluctance in promoting him, but they can't wait too long before allowing him to supplant either Silva or Scott Baker in the rotation for the stretch run. Garza is the future ace of the Twins, and his competitive spirit is commendable. It would help his development to log some innings now, several slots behind über-ace Santana, before his imminent departure in free agency after 2008. The time for Garza is soon. Labels: AL Central Al East: A-Rod gets redemptionAlex Rodriguez ended perhaps his most tumultuous week as a Yankee late Sunday night with a line drive home run into the Red Sox bullpen at Fenway Park in a driving rain. That it came on an 0-2 pitch -- fastball, outside corner -- from Boston's ace reliever, Jonathan Papelbon, and proved to be the game-winner, made it even sweeter for Rodriguez, who graced both the front and back covers of the New York tabloids this past week. Rodriguez was on the front cover for stepping out with a blonde who is not his wife (give Red Sox fans points for cleverness in how they handled that one). On Friday, he was on the back cover for a ninth-inning incident against the Blue Jays. With the Yankees ahead by a run, Hideki Matsui on second and Rodriguez on first, Jorge Posada lifted a fly ball in the infield between third and short. As the ball hung up in the air, Rodriguez passed between the two fielders and yelled, "Ha!" The ball fell in safely, Matsui scored, and Jason Giambi -- who was later put on the DL for at least 4-6 weeks with a bad foot -- followed with a two-run single. The Blue Jays were livid with Rodriguez calling his play "bush league" and worse. Toronto manager John Gibbons said, "One thing you know about the Yankees, one of the reason they're so respected, they do things right ... They always have. They have a lot of pride, a lot of class and they play the game hard. And that's not Yankee pride right there. That's not the way they play." Perhaps that is not the way Joe Torre's teams play, not in these kinder and gentler times. Torre later said that he understood why the Blue Jays were upset. Billy Martin would have loved the play (unless of course somebody had the stones to pull it on him). I'm sure Earl Weaver wouldn't have blinked. And Leo Durocher would have approved. Here's Leo the Lip, from his autobiography, Nice Guys Finish Last -- a book that Bill James considers to be one of the best baseball reads of them all: If a man is sliding into second base and the ball goes into center field, what's the matter with falling on him accidentally so that he can't get up and go to third? If you get away with it, fine. If you don't, what have you lost? I don't call that cheating; I call that heads-up baseball. Win any way you can as long as you can get away with it. Derek Jeter has pulled that stunt -- momentarily falling on a runner so they can't advance -- plenty of times, but he never gets called on it. But this is Rodriguez. As Mike Vaccaro put it: "If Pete Rose did this, men would write poems about grittiness, paeans to aggressiveness. But with A-Rod, it rubs opponents the wrong way." Rodriguez wasn't having a great weekend series in Boston. The fans were all over him. Last night in the seventh inning, he failed to drive in the tying run with runners at the corners and just one out. But Mr. Tabloid, Mr. Un-Clutch, came through with the biggest hit of the week for Yankees in the ninth. Along with some fine work from Mariano Rivera, Rodriguez and the Yankees were spared a June burial in Boston. They trail the Red Sox by 12.5 games, and the two teams do not meet again until the last week of August. But for one night, as Bob Ryan notes, Rodriguez and the Yankees gave their fans something to cheer about. Labels: AL East NL West: Underachieving starsFor a division that is close to getting all five of its teams to .500 or better, the NL West still has some noteworthy underachievers. Below are five that have been playing spoiler for their own teams. Arizona Diamondbacks: Carlos Quentin The right fielder has lost none of this preternatural ability to get hit by a pitch: After 103 plunks in three minor-league seasons, the 24-year-old Stanford grad had 14 in his first 346 major league plate appearances. But last year, Quentin was inflicting his own damage, slugging .530 in 191 plate appearances as a rookie. This season, Quentin's slugging percentage has been punished, falling to .380 -- though that itself is an improvement from three weeks ago, when it was down at .271. Colorado Rockies: Garrett Atkins The guy is 27 years old, coming off a season in which he had a .409 on-base percentage and .556 slugging percentage. And he's playing at Coors Field. So why was he down to a .300 OBP and .335 slugging heading into Sunday's games? The humidor doesn't only work on him, does it? Colorado will be hoping that a homer, double and game-winning 10th-inning single Sunday against Cincinnati isn't just a tease. The home run was the second since April 14 and fourth on the season for Atkins, who hit 29 in 2006. Los Angeles Dodgers: Nomar Garciaparra In a year that has been a surprising challenge for several big-name major-league first basemen, Garciaparra can console himself that Richie Sexson, Carlos Delgado and Paul Konerko, among others, are hurting at the plate. Still, Dodger fans might not be in much of a mood to commiserate now that Garciaparra looks like he's 33 going on 43. In the first half of 2006, Garciaparra had a 1.004 OPS. in the second half, his OPS tumbled to .694, and now through the first two months of 2007, he's at .685 with one solitary home run. He had two extra-base hits in 104 plate appearances during the entire month of May (.289 slugging percentage). San Diego Padres: Khalil Greene Last week, an attention-worthy post at Padres blog Gaslamp Ball asked, "Is Khalil a Bust?" The conclusion: "As it looks right now, we have a starting shortstop with a history of injury problems that can't hit for average, has no speed, not much power, can't hit in his home park and can't get on base." Gaslamp might be too tough on Greene for his power -- seven home runs, 16 doubles and a .436 slugging percentage for a good-fielding shortstop at Petco Park ain't so bad -- but with a .262 on-base percentage for the year, it's been an all-or-nothing kind of existence. San Francisco Giants: Omar Vizquel Speaking of slick-fielding shortstops, here's one who has seen better offensive days. It's hard to expect to much when a player has turned 40, but Vizquel has never been more of a one-dimensional player than he is now: a .274 on-base percentage and .278 slugging percentage, essentially rendering him a nonentity in the Giants' lineup. Since May 14, Vizquel was 7-for-52 (.135) with three walks before getting two singles and a walk Sunday. The NL West enters play this week with Los Angeles, San Diego and Arizona virtually tied for first place, and San Francisco and Colorado essentially tied for fourth. The Padres and Dodgers begin a three-game series Tuesday in San Diego, which will be marked by the return from the disabled list of Jason Schmidt, who threw six shutout innings in a rehabilitation start last week against a Class A opponent but won't have faced major league competition in nearly two months. Chris Young will challenge Schmidt on the hill Tuesday, followed by Greg Maddux against Randy Wolf on Wednesday and Jake Peavy vs. Hong-Chih Kuo (making his second start of the year) Thursday. The Diamondbacks, meanwhile, will host the Giants while the Rockies hope to gain ground by playing the slumping Houston Astros. Over the weekend, interleague play returns, with Arizona drawing the short straw by getting the AL's top dog, the Boston Red Sox. Labels: NL West  |
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