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ESPN.com: MLB – Overhauled Mets get Burnitz in 3-team swap

Glendon Rusch: His whole deal is confidence. If Dave Stewart can instill it Rusch could be as good as Rick Reed. But if he doesn’t he’ll be as hopeless as, well, just about anybody else you’d care to name.

Benny Agbayani: In Colorado he’ll be valuable in ways he wouldn’t have been in Shea. But he’s not enough of a hitter to play full-time.

Lenny Harris: Not a fantasy factory, but always a potentially useful fill in in tough times.

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ESPN.com: MLB – Overhauled Mets get Burnitz in 3-team swap

Jeromy Burnitz: His fantasy value doesn’t change much because of the deal. He helps the Mets. He’ll help your team if you can afford to absorb his batting average.

Jeff D’Amico: He can really pitch when he’s healthy, but he isn’t often healthy. He’s better than Glendon Rusch when he is. Worth a reserve pick, always, and a cheap pick-up whenever it seems he might get into some action that counts.

Lou Collier: Not a fantasy factor.

Mark Sweeney: Never was a fantasy factor, though I once spent a lot of time in the cage analyzing his swing and comparing it to John Mabry’s, back before these two made the bigs. My prediction: Sweeney had the sweeter swing, but lacked Mabry’s decisive aggression at the plate.

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Peter Gammons

Gammons has been kind of useless for trade speculation. He’s a tool of the all the sources who feed him inside dope and jargon, allowing him to talk about the way Edgar Martinez stays inside his swing, and whatnot. But in spite of that he used to be fun to read.

This Q+A is so unrelentingly wishy-washy that it’s unbearable. So have the last few. Jordan and Schuerholz are right? The Braves and the Mets are the teams to beat? It goes on and on.

It is a sign of thoughtfulness and perhaps intelligence to refrain from making stupid, bold statements for the sake of stirring controversy. But the man who can see both sides of the issue has to go out of his way to explain what the issues are, so the reader has the ammo to make up her or his own mind.

Gammons isn’t doing that these days.

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ESPN.com: MLB – Brewers get Proven Veteran in Young

I love Eric Young. I feel like I discovered him in 1995, when I noticed just how often he walked, and how infrequently he struck out. A lot and not much. And when he left Colorado the doubters said he wouldn’t be able to hit in LA, but he did. Because he knows the strike zone.

Why people diss him escapes me. No, he isn’t a great defensive player at this point (though his numbers in Colorado, when he was younger, were awesome), but last year was the only year of his career when he struck out more than walked (by 1).

Eric Young will be 35 in May, and that’s no age to be relying on your footspeed to solidify your place in a ML lineup. But if Jermaine Dye is worth $11M per year to the beloved Athletics, Eric Young is worth less than one fourth that to the profitable Brewers. If you can get him in your mixed league draft at 1/4th Dye’s price, jump all over it. He’s riskier than Dye, but he could be worth just as much without breaking a sweat.

Don’t you think?

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I caught Psyco on da bus, the new band of Tony Allen, who was Fela’s drummer and musical coordinator, the other night. If you dig Fela, check out the opening band, Antibalas, who were simply great. They played all the notes, jammed all the jams. Antibalas is not a cover band, but the a bit of the same musical charge that followed Fela around is carried by Antibalas, a debt they aren’t slow to acknowledge.

Psyco is more interesting, and less likely to get you to shake your booty. They’re more experimental, using electronics and inconsistent beats to organize the tunes. But by the end of the night there were still a lot of us shaking and singing along. Allen is a fine host. And he can really play the drums. Just seeing him is worth the price of admission.

It probably won’t change your life, and they may not be the world’s greatest party band, but Psyco on da bus is a real groove you should try to catch if you can.

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The Mets had to sign Pedro Astacio, and they did. He’s at least as good as Kevin Appier. Assuming he’s healthy he will be one of the top pitchers in the NL this year. Because he may not be healthy, and because his numbers in Colorado seemed so weak, he could come cheap. I wouldn’t pay $20 for him, but if he goes in the $12-$15 range, you have to take the chance.

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ESPN.com: MLB – Dodgers trade Sheffield to Braves for Jordan, pitcher Perez

The acquisition of Sheffield helps the Braves immensely, because he is as good a hitter as Chipper Jones, while Brian Jordan is not. The Braves have often had a problem scoring runs, particularly last year, but if Rafael Furcal is able to get on base the way he did his rookie year (not last year when he entered the season with a subluxated shoulder) they won’t have any problems. Even if Marcus Giles and Wilson Betamit struggle. Atlanta’s park is marginally better to hit in than Dodger Stadium, but the fact is that both team’s problems last year were dismal on-base production in the #1 and 2 spots in the order. Sheffield’s numbers will rise and fall based on how the guys ahead of him get on base.

Jordan has developed a certain consistency over the last few years. There’s no obvious reason why he shouldn’t continue to do pretty much what he has been doing. Will he match his 2001 numbers? Or stumble to the 2000 level? He says he’s on a mission to prove the lying, heartless Bravos wrong, but I’d still say he’ll end up somewhere in between.

Odalis Perez could bail the Dodgers out. He is still young and after missing all of 2000 made good strides last year, showing that he’s healthy enough to succeed. Now he has to do it. He may not be pressed in LA. They have a lot of arms, though there is continuing talk of Eric Gagne ending up in the bullpen. Perez is well worth a modest bid this year. What his price is going to be will depend on how much hype he provokes this spring.

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I’ll only make one quick comment about the Carlos Pena-Mario Ramos et al deal between the Athletics and the Rangers: I’m getting tired of the Billy Beane hagiography. But that’s because I’m at heart contrarian and impatient. It’s hard not cheering for the little Athletics that could, and the engineer driving the train.

But what I’m responding to is the second half of Rob’s column on Monday, about the comparison between DiMaggio and Ted Williams’ most famous streaks. The story is here: ESPN.com: MLB – DiMaggio’s streak not even one in a million

Here is what I wrote to Neyer, after some time working through the numbers:

Hi Rob,

I enjoyed watching Jose Burilla’s math from my untenured position here in Brooklyn, but I think he missed one pertinent detail: The question being asked is about the odds of someone else breaking the record, not for the odds of the immortal repeating? Right?

While Williams’ consecutive times on base streak would be relatively easy for him to equal, because he’s the all time OBP leader, it would be significantly more difficult for the average player to best.

And while DiMaggio was no slouch in AVG during his career, he ranks 41st all time in that category, I think that means he was more average in AVG than Williams is in OBP.

The odds of a .334 OBP (last year’s AL OBP) hitter to equal Williams mark are about 1 in 42,000,000.

While the odds of a player who gets hits in 23.8% of his AB (last year’s AL average hits per PA) getting a hit in 56 consecutive games is roughly 1 in 220,000,000. While it will clearly be easier for someone else to break the Splinter’s record than the Clipper’s, the difference is about half as large as advertised because of the differing contexts.

I suppose that the proper way to ask this question, however, would be to look at peak values. It only takes one hot run by one player, after all, to break either record. So, last year the top AL OBP was Jason Giambi’s .477, which is quite similar to Williams’ lifetime OBP, but significantly lower than Williams .526 OBP in 1957, the year he set the record.

The times Giambi would match Williams’ record in 1 million games, given his performance last year, is 7 (Williams, at the pace he performed in 1957, would have done it 34 times).

The best hit per plate appearance mark in the AL last year was by Ichiro, of course, who had hits in 33 percent of his plate appearances. Given a million games at that rate Ichiro could be expected to hit in 56 straight games 38 times.

For DiMaggio to repeat his feat would have been much harder than for Williams to repeat his, but that doesn’t mean DiMaggio’s is a harder record to break.

Best,
Peter

Almost immediately after sending that off I realized I’d overlooked something. So I fired off another letter:


It occurred to me after I sent the last email that DiMaggio probably had a better than normal year in 1941, too. So I looked it up.

His H per PA was .307, a far sight lower than Ichiro’s, though better than his career mark.

That translates to him hitting in 56 straight games 7 times out of a million. As Jose pointed out, at his career average level he would have done it once (which he in fact did, of course).

BTW, I’ve fudged the PA per game data. Ichiro would have more than DiMaggio, of course. The average ALer last year had fewer appearances (4.28) per game. I did all the probabilities at DiMaggio’s 1941 rate as calculated by Jose.

Thanks for listening.
Peter

I’m not sure what the lesson here is. What surprises me a little are the huge swings in probability, depending whether you measure from peak value or average value. The bottom line is that the odds are long (one million games represents 6,173 seasons) and a slight difference can improve the odds seven fold, but that doesn’t mean we’re ever likely to see its like again.