A NY Times story explains it all. Tremendous Upside Potential provides the picture and another comment.
News
A Nathan Mourns…
Everybody knows about Joe Nathan, the man with the most saves in baseball the last six years, who has a tear in his ulnar collateral ligament. The problem right now, for me, is that I’m preparing updated projections for the Patton Software and there is no way to know whether Nathan is out for two months or two years. You see, the odds of Nathan getting back onto a field after rehabbing from surgery are real long, so the first medical approach is to wait a couple/few weeks, try to strengthen the supporting muscles, and see if he can pitch through it.
Not many do, but if he can, then he might get a few months of the season in and have some value this year. If he can’t, he has no value this year at all, and no value next year either. So, what should I do with his projection? And what should I do with the interesting set of relievers in the Twins’ bullpen, any of whom might actually be able to do the job if given the chance?
Let’s call what I do “pussyfootin’,” because it’s a lot like the gait of Violet, the cat that just walked over my keyboard and curled up on the back of my desk and didn’t knock over a thing (and only introduced a few typos along the way). I’m careful, thoughtful, and when I’m clear I leap. And, like Woody Allen, I always usually (yeah, right) land on my feet.
In the new set of projections I cut Nathan’s projection in half, to 35 innings pitched, and I bump his ERA and WHIP up just a bit, then cut his bid price down to $10, which I don’t think I’d pay if I was drafting tonight, but I do think someone else would bid $11 if I did. $10 isn’t likely to be the bid price in two weeks, when we’re supposed to know more, but it does reflect the market now. I don’t think you want Nathan, but you don’t want someone else to get him too cheaply. There is too much we don’t know.
My first impulse after Nathan’s injury was to bump up Jon Rauch’s projection, giving him most of the saves, but while I still think he has to be the favorite to win the job, because he did some time in the past as a closer in Washington, he’s not a lock. I made him $9 at first, because he can earn that as a middle reliever even if he doesn’t get the job, but I’ve now knocked him down to $7 because, well, there are too many alternatives to assume that he will get the job, and too many questions about his work last year to be confident he’ll hold the job if it is given to him.
Matt Guerrier is usually cited as next in line after Rauch, but even though he was a closer in college and has been an excellent middle reliever–other than in 2008–he doesn’t profile as a closer. He doesn’t blow guys away, in other words. I’ve bumped him up to $4 (he earned $15 in 2009) and allocated him some of the saves sliced from Nathan’s line. I think that’s safe, even though he doesn’t have closer upside.
The guy everybody likes for the job, talentwise, is Pat Neshek, who missed most of the last two years following a 2008 breakdown that led to TJ surgery. He’s healthy now, but still working his way back. He’s got an interesting sidearmed delivery that is deceptive and brings lots of movement. Historically, he hasn’t had much of a platoon split. The issue is whether he is really back. Chances are the Twins aren’t going to throw him into the fire immediately, so I give him a few of the saves and a bid of a couple dollars in the new version. You have to be aware of him, but he’s still a long shot at this point.
The other closer-quality pitcher on the Twins’ staff is Jose Mijares, who is the only lefty in the Twins’ pen right now. Even if that situation persists he could get some saves, but he won’t get a lot of saves. I added a couple of saves to his projection, but kept him as a $1 bid. He won’t go for more until the Twins add a lefty to their pen.
Saves are a tricky business. Any pitcher going good can get saves, but we can see with our own eyes that not everyone is able to keep going good when the pressure rises. There are some who say that Mijares is a choker, but his Leverage Index (see baseball-reference.com) shows that he performed best in the toughest situations last year. Until we’ve seen a big enough sample, it’s impossible to really judge a pitcher’s readiness for the role, but easy to understand why guys in high leverage jobs lose their jobs before they can prove that they are victims of the random thing.
Projecting player performance is a tricky business. The talent evaluation part is fairly straight forward, but projecting playing time is usually the difference between a good and bad projection. While pussyfootin’, I try to split the difference, to balance the expression of talent with the possibility of opportunity. Those of us drafting next week are going to have to make catlike choices when it comes to selecting the Twins’ closer. My adjusted bid prices are an attempt to equalize the odds of success vs. price for each player.
Ps. There was speculation today that the Twins might move Francisco Liriano to the pen, maybe even the closer spot, given their situation. This isn’t an obvious move, but if Liriano is struggling as a starter it seems like a natural next step. That, of course, screws all the values above, all of which will be updated next time no matter what happens.
That’s How Easy Love Can Be
I found this clip over at boingboing.net and it seems the perfect view with which to remember Michael Jackson, whose music as a young boy is marked by its sweetness and exuberance, but which grew increasingly paranoid and sour as he grew older and it became more reflective of the pains and abuses of those early years.
Yost addresses dismissal on Tuesday
Yost plays the fool a bit and–as ably pointed out by Joe Sheehan yesterday–isn’t a tactical genius, but in this story he shows his passion and his belief in himself, and it’s hard not to feel bad for him not being allowed to finish the job, one way or the other. In the absence of scandal it’s hard to see the fairness of the firing, the team did rock in August, but looking at a team that responeded in May when challenged (another time Yost seemed likely to lose his job) it’s hard not to see Doug Melvin’s rationale for putting the spurs to them now, when it might do some good.
Still, one of the problems with baseball analysis is that we don’t really know what works or doesn’t work. Yost, in this story, talks about the self examination he’ll be doing since his teams crumbled two years in a row in September. It’s worth looking at, but just because it happened two years in a row doesn’t prove it’s a trend. It might be. Or might not.
It’s difficult to imagine being in Dale Sveum’s position. With a rebound comes glory, and with continued decline comes frustration. The hitters have been sucking wind the last two weeks, but it seems like the pitching that’s falling apart. And isn’t that the place teams usually fail?
If Ned Yost messed up the pitching staff, it’s too late to fix it.
Joe Sheehan on a Righteous Three-way Deal
Maybe it would be better if the lives of trees were at stake (he goes on a little) but this is an excellent analysis of the Sox-Bucs-Dodgers deal yesterday. Maybe it’s that there’s nothing mind-blowingly original (Epstein good, Coletti bad), but every point is made clearly and in a larger context. Maybe it’s that he ends on a somewhat confessional insidery note. This is a solid piece of work worth reading.
Embedded in Iraq
t r u t h o u t | Michael Massing
My old poker buddy went to Iraq recently, and writes in his usual clear way about complex issues with nuance and understanding. There isn’t anything particularly new here, but while he considerings the success of the surge and the rather divergent positions the two presidential candidates have taken on the war, Michael explores the merits of each side’s thinking and what the means next year and five years down the road. Well worth reading, and not even inside baseball in it’s metaphorical sense. Instead, fine reporting and clear analysis.
Hamilton, wife to hold Q&A session
The Official Site of The Texas Rangers
After Sunday’s game Josh Hamilton and his wife will be doing a Q+A with Rangers fans about their past problems. The story of the former first draft pick who seemed totally lost, but is now found, is a good one. And while my radar shouts PR move here, his quote about what his wife has gone through and what other wives have gone through, and how their stories should be heard, strikes me as powerfully honest. If I happened to be in Arlington tomorrow I’d stick around for the chat, and not just because he’s on my AL-only team.
Buzz Bissinger Will Abuse You Into Civility
Serious Business: Gawker reefers a Bob Costas joint. Will “Deadspin” Leitch does a great job of explaining why the blogosphere is different than the mainstream media, and why both need to exist, but Bob and Buzz and (to a lesser extent) Braylon aren’t really listening. Will is brilliant, we all know, but the issue here is really about what’s news and why it matters. And he makes the far better argument than the workaday Buzz and the hyperprivileged Bob. That they seem to see him as some sort of sports journalism Al Queda is entrancing. Which is why I ended up watching all of the 18:00 minute clip, despite the curse words by the mainstream guys. That’s not newspaper talk.
The One Pitcher Congress Believes
The best single summary of yesterday’s events in Congress I’ve seen. And shorter than a lot of them, too.
New Ballpark Webcam
The Official Site of The Minnesota Twins
Construction is underway on the Twins new ballpark, and it was announced this week that despite cost overruns (already!) that the Twins themselves will make up the difference.
Meanwhile, my wife, author of Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, tells me that the stadium is being built less than 1,000 feet away from a giant trash incinerator that will be releasing all sorts of toxics from the materials it burns. The upper deck of the new yard will be at about the same height as the smoke stack of the incinerator.
This link is to the report analyzing how many of those metals will end up in the playing field, how much players and fans will inhale and ingest (there is actually a formula to determine dirt ingestion in the report), and how that compares to EPA and other (many elements don’t have established harm levels yet) standards.
So far, things look good, though the discussion of the effects on a Child Season Ticket Holder fired my imagination, if not any sense of imminent alarm.
It’s good the builders and the county government and the Twins are thinking about these things. Let’s just hope they get it right.